In-process 3D laser measurement to control the fiber tape-laying for composite production

摘要

Metrology is the key to an economically feasible production of fiber-reinforced composites in the field of automated tape laying, applying a novel laser light-section sensor system (LLSS) to measure process quality and feed back the results to close control loops of the production system. The developed method derives 3D measurements from height profiles through an in-process surface scan by the integrated LLSS. Gaps, overlaps, misalignment and defects of the composite tapes are detected during their lay-up and consolidation by comparing the measurement results with a CAD/CAM model of the lay-up. The height profiles are processed with a novel algorithm based on a non-linear least-square fitting to a set of sigmoid functions to ensure sub-pixel accuracy.